Summer Holidays

Yep, it’s that time of the year again, when the tug of wanderlust is at its strongest. This year it will take us to France...

Therefore, for (at least) the next three weeks, I won’t be able to visit you but I’ll certainly think of you when I will stroll on the banks of the river Seine, loose myself in the Catacombs, or dream a dream of kings and princesses in the Loire Valley… Even at EuroDisney where we’ll take our daughters as a small redemption for the too many museums they’ll have to visit…

So, be cool, be happy, be creative (good luck to all the participants in Jason’s contest! - see my attempt below), and I’ll “see” you at the end of July.

In Vino Veritas - outside the contest

I will be away at the time Jason will officially declare open his new contest, but his superb photograph told me a story that I couldn't resist. So here it is, my version of it...




“Bellissimo,” she whispered. “How old are they?”

Constellations unravelled luxuriously under the gold of candles spread on the polychrome marble floor.

“Signora, I give you the tomb of Balbillus, astrologist to the emperors Claudius, Nero and Vespasian. We are the first to see it. Tomorrow is for the world…”

“Harry…”

“Imagine, this could be the air they breathed. A bubble of perfectly preserved time…”

A sparkling table was set in the middle of the room.

“A romantic dinner in an ancient tomb. How wicked, Dr. Beecham!”

He bowed.

“Just for you, contessina.”

He worked the seal of a dusty amphora.

“Harry?”

“A taste of what they drank. Maybe a glimpse into… their Rome.

“How do you know it’s wine?”

“I accidentally broke one yesterday…”

He pointed at the bottle of Laffite on the table. “We have a backup in case it’s turned sour.”

He poured into the crystal glasses, a blood-red honey surprisingly translucent after 2000 years.

“To you, contessa.”

“To ancient Rome.”

They sipped. It was the strongest cognac, the sweetest.

She saw Harry fall before her world turned into a whirlwind.


*


Strident noises funnelling into shouts, into thundering steps. Smoke.

Harry’s voice above her, with quiet urgency. “Dearest, we must run. It’s the fire.”

At last, she understood, beyond reason.

“No, we must see if he’s… playing the fiddle.”

They stumbled, half-carrying each other, against the crowd in tunics and togas, barely shunning chariots and horses.

Before them, the Palatine loomed enormous, darkness punctuated with incandescence.

64 AD.

Times Four

I really had to “steal” this from Charles Gramlich because I liked it so much and because he doesn’t do any tagging actually… :-)

I think I needed something light to match the summery mood brought on by longer, sunnier days, and by the approaching holidays.

So, here goes… (in alphabetical order, wherever possible)

Four Movies You Can See Over and Over

The Birdcage
From Dusk Till Dawn
The Party
Pulp Fiction

Four Places You Have Lived

Europe
Montreal, Canada

(sorry, I only have two…)

Four TV Shows You Love(d) to Watch (I watch extremely little TV now – I used to be addicted to it years ago but, luckily, the arrival of my first daughter cured me of that)

Cheers
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Seinfeld
Star Trek – Enterprise (the last in the series)


Four Places You Have Been on a Vacation

Florida
Italy
Mexico
Prince Edward Island


Four of your favorite foods

Cheese
Cherries
Corn on the cob
Mushrooms

Four Websites You Visit Daily

Google
The Internet Movie Database
Amazon
As many blogs as I can

Four Places You Would Rather Be

The seaside
Manhattan
At home, writing
On a sailing boat, sailing the seven seas


Four Things You Hope to Do Before You Die

Publish a story
Go to Easter Island
Visit the pyramids of Egypt
Walk in the Amazon jungle


Four Novels You Wish You Were Reading for the First Time

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne
Rendez-vous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke


Tag Four People You Believe Will Respond

Absolute Vanilla (& Atyllah)
Catvibe
K.Lawson Gilbert
Laughingwolf

Thank you for playing! :-)

Summer Reverie

Lupin Sunset by Eb Mueller


Darling, I’m the breeze tonight
In young petals, mauve and mellow,
I’m the moon reflecting, bright,
On the old pond in the meadow,

As I dare, perchance, to dream
It’s your hair my fingers part
And, for all sweet things agleam,
That the mirror is your heart.

Sculpture

tears of statues
stream inwardly,
rivulets of bronze
or marble,
wood,
granite,
slowly returning
to the grain
of their respective
matter,
broken
into the very atoms
of grief,
or the tiny
electrons of
joy,
never betrayed
by their
rigid composure,
and hinted only
by empty eyes,
of which,
on occasion,
blood’s been
seen
to flow.

Requiem

on the umpteenth anniversary
of the strawberry ice cream
and the wild run in the rain,
of her soaked braids over
her beaming face,
of his warm hands holding hers,
nothing remains -

a few shreds of hearts
that any wind takes.

photo art from viktaar.deviantart.com

In my Garden

Little eerie kingdoms of beauty grace the shadows. I dream of being ant sized, about to walk through an enchanted forest,



gather fragrant pearls splattered on gowns of chlorophyll,



or hide unknown under a mallard’s wing and contemplate the world from the perspective of the spring sky.



Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!

Nothing

This little thing’s been somehow inspired by Karen’s “Ain’t Got No” and “The House of the Poet", although she's definitely got it and I'm looking for it... :-)

This is not a forget-me-not, but I liked this blue flower growing out of nowhere on a white beach in Mexico, last summer...

nobody comes
to this barren county,
no flash flood fingers
patter these deep canyons,
no rain drops
kiss this dust.
wary weary birds
take detours
over greener landscapes,
the sky is a cobweb
in the corner of
a condemned room.
the groundskeeper is
almost dead,
unpaid,
very sad;
he’s still rummaging
for his blue flower,
his forgotten forget-me-not,
somewhere among the rocks
of his life,
somewhere among the debris
of his time.
he can’t even compose
a damn’ travel guide.

Another Blogiversary

This baby is two years old today.

Hard to believe, in a way, that it has happened and that it’s still going on.

I would like to thank all of my dear blogfriends for their graceful presence and their unrelenting support. You are the pillars on which this (mostly) imaginary world is built.

Onward to another year.

Too Close to Home

When an evil menaces or touches others, obviously there is compassion, concern, even pain that we feel, but all are somehow cushioned by the relatively safe distance from which we think we can witness the events.

This past Saturday, we got a phone call from the Public Health department (or something like that) to inform us that there’s a confirmed case of swine influenza at my older daughter’s school, and not just in her school but in her very class.

I won’t try to describe the sinking feeling that swept over us – I can do that in fiction but not in real life.

The woman who called had a very professional voice, very calm, impassionate; she described symptoms, told us what to do, etc. etc. What she wouldn’t tell was the name of the sick child. I think that the protection of privacy is badly used in this case because knowing who it is would also help us know if our daughter was in contact with that child.

While I understand the need to keep panic under control, I don’t understand the serenity of these people after all the fuss from the media and the World Health Organisation. Is it a real threat or is it not? Anyway, I don’t understand why the school – this is a private school - is not closed and how all they’re offering is a “team of doctors and nurses” to greet the children in the morning and explain to them what to do (i.e. how to wash their hands).

Well, as many other parents did, I’m sure, we decided to keep our daughter home for a while, until things are sorted out, one way or another. She’s a bit worried about missing school, but not too much. After all, she gets to watch her favourite movies all over again (this morning she was watching the third instalment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean”)…

All Life

Last night, a tiny mosquito, fresh and soft, little more than a speck of soot, rested his confusion on the white wall of my bathroom.

How omnipotent I felt, against this fragile sparkle of life…

I caught him in a glass jar and sent him away, on the night wind, to tell Spring how happy I was she’s sent her heralds.

This afternoon, in the warm rain, I was again a gentle god, tiptoeing on the stone pavement, to spare the lives of young earthworms…

photo by karstenkneese

It Came From... - a fragment

This is the beginning of a story that occupies my mind and my writing time these days, and one of the big reasons I haven’t been very present on your blogs or on mine. I’m sorry! I’ll try to remedy this in the following days, that is catch up with my friends’ blogs.

Keep in mind it’s just the first draft – I’m still heavily editing it. As always, constructive critique is very welcome… :-)



In his obscure and now impossible to find book, A Compendium of Bizarre Things, my great-uncle Gerardus de Kremer, the eminent anthropologist and esoterist, dedicates a miniature article to what he calls the “green hand of the Devil”, a mummified hand of normal proportions, except that the dried skin was green and it had four fingers instead of five. The brevity of the said note is rather disconcerting by comparison to the other entries where my great-uncle’s meticulousness and erudition shine through with unrelenting force. It almost feels as if he’d rather have left it out if not for his deep compulsion for rigour and truthfulness. This abandonment had much surprised me at the time, even disappointed me, given the lengths at which he had then gone to acquire its bizarre story.

There’s been more than a quarter-century since.

That I would even think of this “green hand of the Devil,” of all things, while I watched the red brick tower of Sint-Pietersstation approaching, was beyond baffling to me.

Funny how our minds tend to hop around, skidding through the most unexpected associations only to end in a place far away from where the first thought started. Or maybe not that far away. Call it premonition, if you want, or telepathy, or just plain coincidence, whichever you prefer.

I climbed down from the train that had brought me to Ghent from Paris, my little suitcase in hand, a little wobbly on my feet, like a sailor who hasn’t returned to shore for a long time. In my breast pocket I carried an envelope, the stiff reminder of what had urged me here, this long-abandoned little town of my birth.

“The time is near. Come at once to claim your legacy,” my great-uncle Gerardus had written, in his sharp, nervous handwriting. How well I remembered his harsh, authoritative manners that never suffered any disobedience yet commanded the utmost unconditional respect. The old dog! Who could think he was still alive? He’d been ancient even when I was a young boy and he dragged me with him in his wild-goose chases.

It was a crisp mid-afternoon of September. The rain had stopped just as the train was pulling into the station and, in front of Sint-Pieters, the already fading sun played into the infinite mirrors of puddles. The trees boarding Königin Maria Hendrikaplein were round and green, and the narrow houses and hotels behind them were red and yellow, and this place that had once been a part of me, seemed now only oddly familiar, like an old song giving off a vague pang of melancholy.

There were three taxis waiting at the corner, but I wanted to walk a little, not sure even if I knew what I was doing there.

I turned on Königin Astridlaan and, before I knew it, I was standing in front of the second-hand bookshop of Mr. Adhémar, my place of pilgrimage in my teenage years. I couldn’t count how many hours, days, years even, I had spent in the little store, while assisting my great-uncle. I used to be familiar with every corner, every speck of dust on those old treasures, but modernisation has brought here too its changing touches. The owners had transformed the area within the immense bay window into what seemed a cosy coffee shop; I wondered if Mr. Adhémar was still there and how he could allow the clients to browse his precious books while sipping the aromatic brew of Mrs. Adhémar.

For a moment, I wanted to turn and leave but then I allowed a whim to take me inside. With relief, I recognised Mr. Adhémar when he turned at the sound of the entrance bell, his waist hugely rounded, otherwise age clement with him.

“Oh, oh,” he said, as a recognition mixed with incredulity came over him. “My dear boy…”

He hugged me, resting his white head on my chest. His warm surprise and welcome brought discrete tears to my eyes.

How I've grown. He couldn’t believe how many years had passed since he’s last seen me, was it twenty, thirty? And what news I had about my uncle?

He’s still alive apparently, was all I could tell him.

Was I married? Did I have any children?

Yes, my wife and two sons were in Paris.

I should come teach at the fine university we have here. And I had to stay and have coffee there and a mastel, on the house of course, lest I would bring him a pain as big as his joy of seeing me again.

I agreed to this open-heartedly and I sat at one of the three tables. He returned almost immediately, the coffee steaming in the finest china cup, the mastel the biggest bun I had ever had, but then he retreated to tend to a customer.

Among the books left on the table, there lay one that caught my attention most obtrusively, due to its size and its bright yellow cover, and I took it out of the pile to flick through it. “Country Fairs and Road Shows of Western Europe in the 19th Century” was the title. It was a perfectly preserved hardcover from 1920, richly adorned with splendid sepia illustrations. Three men high, fire-eaters, fakirs sleeping on nails, sword-swallowers, giants holding dwarfs on their shoulders. I couldn’t believe the chance of falling upon such a treasure. An atlas, more, of wonders that have enchanted every child’s world. I was prepared to buy it, not only to please good Mr. Adhémar, and I turned it over to search for the price.

I don’t know how it slipped from my clumsy hands, maybe it was the high glossiness of the cover, or my unusual absentmindedness. As I dived, rather inelegantly, as not to drop it on the floor, a yellowed paper fell from the tome. I picked it up with the tips of my fingers and carefully unfolded it lest it would disintegrate.

It was an old poster – a jewel in itself - advertising the Grand Fair at Ghent, June 7 to 17, 1914. Oh! Not even the World Expo from ’13, not even the annual festival at Ghent had imprinted on the memory of the adolescent I was then as this travelling circus had. The last before the Great War. The greatest circus of them all.

I must know. I have been there. That’s where we found that “green hand of the Devil.”

Mini Bunny Gallery

When words don't come easily, when Lady Inspiration is away on holiday, when time is missing (I'm sure agent Mulder knows something about it) one can always make use of one's child's drawings...

Here's hop(p)ing that, if you celebrated Easter, it was a wonderful one and that you're enjoying each moment of Spring.






I'll be back soon...

Aries

time to get all mushy,
another birthday’s here.
my… ha! no, I will not say it,
let alone write it.
this denial is my cocoon,
my unblemished skin,
my dreams beaming in my eyes,
my time machine
around which
hurricanes of loss
happen
without touching me.
bring on the champagne,
bring on all the sweet illusions,
this Aries rebuffs the wisdom of age,
this Aries will just not change.

An Award and a Meme

K. Lawson Gilbert from Old Mossy Moon has graciously given me the Sisterhood Award. Thank you, Kaye, from the bottom of my heart! These vibes of sisterhood, I feel them deeply when we interact in the blogosphere.
I’ve never had siblings – although I always dreamt of an older brother – but over the years I have had a few fantastic girlfriends who were to me, by choice, more than any sister, by nature, would’ve been. Physical distance keeps us apart now, but the feeling is still there, that feeling of solidarity, of belonging, of shared secrets, of complicity, if you want.

Much of the same warms my heart now when we exchange thoughts and feelings on our blogs. I’m very grateful for it. And so I’m glad for the opportunity to show a little of my appreciation by giving the award to (unfortunately only) a few of my… sisters:

Absolute Vanilla & Attilah
L.A. Mitchell
Lisa
Miladysa
Sarah Hina

Now for the meme…

Sarah has tagged me with a list of the twenty-five authors who have influenced my writing. Hmmm… It wasn't easy to assemble it, but in the end I realised there were several other writers that I would've liked to add to the list and couldn't.

This is my list, in alphabetical order:


1) Greg Bear (for “Eon”, “Eternity”, “The Forge of God”, and “Anvil of Stars”)
2) Jorge Luis Borges
3) Edgar Rice Burroughs
4) Raymond Chandler
5) Agatha Christie
6) Willkie Collins
7) Michael Crichton
8) Arthur Conan Doyle
9) Alexandre Dumas
10) Thomas Hardy
11) E.T.A. Hoffman (the German Romantic author)
12) Stephen King
13) H. P. Lovecraft
14) Thomas Mann (the German author of “Buddenbrooks”)
15) Daphne du Maurier
16) Margaret Mitchell
17) Edgar Allan Poe
18) Jean Ray (the Belgian master of the fantastic, author of “Malpertuis”)
19) William Shakespeare
20) Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
21) Robert Silverberg
22) Dan Simmons (the “Hyperion” series)
23) Bram Stoker
24) Jules Verne
25) Emile Zola

I think that Sarah has said a very wise and true thing, and I couldn’t agree more with her. I have learned tremendously from my fellow bloggers over my almost two years among them and, for this, I am very grateful.

It’s my turn now to invite Bernard, L.A. Mitchell, and Miladysa to play along.

Soon

On the old porch we jumped
to the rhythm of water drops,
the tap dance played by Sun’s fingers
on the ancient snow of the roof.

Tip-tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tip

Two empty jam containers-
red like the strawberries
they once held-
caught it,
one for “tip”, one for “tap”.

And the smell of dried wood
in the almost spring wind,
and the happy twirls of squirrels,
and even the poor snowman,
its smile somewhere at its feet,
all twined their magic notes
into this concert of our hearts.

Tip-tap-tip-tip-tap-tip-tip

Soon the Sun will loose its instrument,
soon it’ll be spring.

A Bit of Trivia

As someone who is utterly obsessed with time, I can’t help seeing in the ever increasing signs of impending spring not just a reason for rejoice at nature’s rebirth but also a cause of reflection and melancholy at life’s passing. For, you see, the flowers, and the birds, and the bees that bring joy to our hearts are not the same, although they might appear to be, and we certainly are not – we are one winter older… Oh, how I wish I could regain, if only for a singular moment, a pair of child’s eyes through which to see the world.



Paradoxically, I feel at the same time paralysed and restless, and thus I’m not able to do much, if anything. If I write at one of my stories, I can’t master any discipline and jump from one scene to another in an almost random manner. If I read blogs, I often don’t have the patience to write a comment. Please, bear with me… I’m still here.

*

Among other books (I always read several at a time), I’m reading one, which I will not name, that amazes me with the negligence of the writing. It’s too bad because the idea of the story is very interesting and it could’ve been a good book. How is it, I wonder, that such books are published to the detriment of other, much better works?

*

I’m quite worried about my older daughter who, more than a month after the gastro-intestinal virus that had hit all of us, is still accusing permanent nausea and stomach pain. The doctors have still to find a cause and a remedy for this. But the nervous energy involved is tremendous and debilitating.

*

On a lighter note, about three weeks ago, my younger daughter and I found a domestic rabbit in the parking lot of her day care. A white California baby bunny who we only noticed because it hopped around among the huge snow mounds. I was very worried about it and wanted to catch it and take it home, only hesitating at the thought of an even more worried owner looking for it. I alerted the good people at the day care and they too showed a lot of concern, the directress especially, a very nice and caring woman. So they caught it the next day (the poor thing had spent the night outside in the freezing cold) and somebody from the day care took it home for a few days. They put ads everywhere hoping they would find the owner but no one came.

My daughter and I wanted her very much and the directress also wanted her very much (it turns out it’s a girl), but after those few days we took her home because that’s how it was decided in the beginning. (Children are so bizarre or so wise… Next to my older daughter’s school, there is a cemetery, hardly noticeable among the lush park-like vegetation. I had no idea my youngest knew what the place was until she told me, with complete serenity, “When the rabbit dies, we’ll bury her here.” I was speechless, I, who don’t want pets because I’m afraid of the pain at their loss, I who cried when a fish died, or a water snail...)

What a sweet, sweet, sweet bunny! We couldn’t keep her. I wish we could’ve kept her! We’ve only had her for three days and I already missed her when we gave her to the directress. Unfortunately, we don’t have a room at home that we could dedicate to her, and to supervise her continuously while she was out of her cage would have meant the end of my already diminutive spare time. But the directress and her daughter wanted to get a rabbit anyway so this one came to them just in time.

She’s doing very well and we are being given updates on her well-being and on her exploits, and very cute pictures, of which I share this one with you…

On That Warm Night

oh, how you held me on that warm night,
in the gardens with the ancient trees
draped in Spanish moss,
until I knew no more what held me
your arms or the darkness

oh, how you spoke the dark words of your love
your mouth against the hollow of my neck
that spot of sweetness where life pulses,
eager and frightened,
beneath the elegant florals of my perfume
(Valentino, forever, my darling)

how I cradled your head in between
the captive bird in my chest and my bare arms,
white swan necks,
and how I loved your warmth,
underneath your exquisite dinner jacket,
and let you breathe me,
and offered myself to be breathed in

photo by Philip Gould/CORBIS

(noises reached us from the terrace as if
from an entirely different world
of strangers,
well-dressed men and women,
with their champagne and their music)

how our fingers entwined
against the rough bark of the oak tree
like roots of Spanish moss
hoping for an illusory shelter

how our lips sought the very essence
of the universe,
wildly, gently until
it was not in the galactic abysses
that we found it
but in our blood

oh, how we trembled,
how we laughed,
how we died

how impetuous we were

Doubt

artwork from web.org.uk/personal/art

What we see
is not
what we see

What we love
is not
what we love

Everything is
illusion
allusion
delusion

The stars even
are not
the stars

In the desert of deceit
or self-deceit
reality is
a perpetual
Fata Morgana

Relativity
reigns
absolute

Only birth
stands true
only death

“The Historian” – a review

I have just finished reading “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova and, although – for various reasons - I seldom write reviews of contemporary literature, this time I felt drawn to share some thoughts on it with you.

It’s a vampire book but not like others, and certainly not like the ones where vampirism is only a background for the tale. And it’s a history book, and a travel book, and a delightfully detailed account of a historian’s work.

I must admit I loved it. I felt sad and frustrated when I last closed the book, which for me is a sign that I truly loved it and didn’t want it to end. My frustration comes not from the ending, which is probably as satisfying as it could be under the circumstances, but from a feeling that I experience with other books and subjects too, and that is that I really want to know and not just to imagine...

I had started reading it a while ago and abandoned it after only a few chapters because I couldn’t stand the dread that was coming out of its pages, not a direct but a subtle one and thus much more menacing. In a certain measure, I could say it reminded me of reading Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” though no book yet has reached the pedestal of fright and wonder on which this book exists for me.

One night, while rummaging through her father’s library, a girl of sixteen makes a strange discovery: a bunch of letters, addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor:”, and a bizarre book, all its pages blank, except for the middle.

”I can’t say even now what made me pull them down. But the image I saw at the center of the book, the smell of age that rose from it, and my discovery that the papers were personal letters all caught my attention forcibly.”

She finally gathers the courage to ask her father about it. This is how the story he will tell her starts:

”One spring night when I was still a graduate student, I was in my carrel at the university library, sitting alone very late among rows and rows of books. Looking up from my work, I suddenly realized that someone had left a book whose spine I had never seen before among my own textbooks, which sat on a shelf above my desk. The spine of this new book showed an elegant little dragon, green on pale leather.
I didn’t remember ever having seen the book there or anywhere else, so I took it down and looked through it without really thinking. The binding was soft, faded leather, and the pages inside appeared to be quite old. It opened easily to the very center. Across those two pages I saw a great woodcut of a dragon with spread wings and a long looped tail, a beast unfurled and raging, claws outstretched. In the dragon’s claws hung a banner on which ran a single word in Gothic lettering: DRAKULYA.”

Thus commences the account of the obsessive quest for the tomb of Vlad Ţepeş (pronounced Tsepesh), the Impaler, the Wallachian ruler of the 15th century, defender of Christianity against the Ottoman Turks, who – through his renowned cruelty - has apparently served as an inspiration for the figure of Dracula, the vampire.

Those were cruel times, all over the known world, and I don’t think that he was much worse than his contemporaries, his Ottoman counterpart, for instance, the Sultan Mehmet II.

Vlad is a fascinating figure. He’s lived only forty-five years, from 1431 to 1476, which is not surprising in those times of wars. He was born in Transylvania, where his father, Vlad II, was in exile, and where he’s been taught the skills of a Christian knight. He’s lived as the Sultan’s hostage in Adrianople. He’s reigned twice in Wallachia (the southern part of today’s Romania). The number of his victims is conservatively set at 40,000 during his brief six-year reign. He died at the hand of an assassin, at the end of December 1476 or in early January, 1477. The tomb in the church of Snagov Monastery, near Bucharest, thought by many as Vlad’s burial site, was found empty. The location of his real tomb is unknown.

This is history.

And this is what Bram Stoker says of him:

“He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland. If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' That mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as 'stregoica' witch, 'ordog' and 'pokol' Satan and hell, and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all understand too well. There have been from the loins of this very one great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell. For it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good, in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest."

But let me return to “The Historian”.

The quest spans (eventually) over three generations and, although centred in the geographical area where Vlad had lived and fought the Ottomans, from Wallachia to Istanbul and Transylvania, it also takes us to England, Holland, France, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and back to the United States. It is now the turn of this young woman to trace the incredible mysteries that shadow her family’s past.

The mirage of old books holding within them the promise of forgotten (or forbidden) knowledge will never cease to fascinate me, and a book that tells of such books will always appeal to me.

The meanders of the quest are followed mainly through various letters written by two of the main characters, and partly by a third. One drawback here is that there are no different voices to tell these complementing stories, only one, the author’s.

If I were to bring just another objection to the novel, it would be that more than once I had the impression that coincidences drove the story forward or introduced new characters. This puzzled me at the time, even slightly bothered me, but the yarn is so enticing that I was perfectly willing to ignore them just to find out what discovery they would make next.

The writing is simple, yet elegant, and it has a deep poetry about it, one that I think comes not from the words themselves but from the elegant flow of the sentences and from the beautiful things they describe.

Elizabeth Kostova has taken Dracula from the Hollywood vampire movies and put him back where he belongs, in the history books. But a History that makes us think, and wonder,

“The Historian” is a rich, quiet, serious novel, a remarkable historical and psychological thriller, one that awes and instructs with equal ability.